Z Space Blog

This post is written in solidarity with workers worldwide who face oppressive capitalist enterprises, locking hands with the government charged with protecting them and being an ally. In truth, government and business work together to harm the citizenry. It's an affront to everything decent to rob a man of his usefulness and then discard him like trash. Moreso to be in a position of power and let it happen, against your own professed allegiance. This is another story of labor abuse to add to the pile.

In this post, I am specifically naming Mountain Shadow Nursery as the party who harmed me in the course of labor, and the State of Washington as the governing party abdicating its responsibility to help me, a tax-paying and L&I-contributing resident of Washington since 2014, get back to proper working health.

In September of 2022, I started working as a lab technician at Mountain Shadow Nursery, a plant tissue culture facility in Littlerock, WA, off of Exit 95 in Washington's I-5 highway. It's a small compound with two primary buildings in an open field, owned by Bryan and Joanna McCulloch of Littlerock, WA. There are two driveways -- one gravel, for the workers, and one that is paved, for the business owners. They go parallel down the length of their property, so one is rather curious about why these two roads coexist so closely together. Their home is at the back of the vast field, with a forest of decent thickness on its rear and right flanks. The shortest of commutes, for sure, since the business itself is less than a football field away from the front door of their house.

The work at this place is essentially chopping up plants and putting them into vials of various fertilization media, for the purpose of cloning plants. To do it, you need to wield long pairs of tweezers and scalpels under a plastic "hood" part, which you will be hunching over for 8 hours a day. Then, you'll need to put together dozens of these containers per day. The typical standard is 96 containers of the 30-piece variety. So that's 96 containers of 30 pieces, ergo thousands of times daily that you're squeezing and releasing tweezers. And you can't just toss'em into the vessel, they need precise placement to grow correctly.

The less experienced people had to spend multiple days a week in the dish room, where they shake out the dead plant matter and extra media in the vessels, then wash them. The tooling for getting the media out of these containers is rudimentary, demanding that the worker shake the vessels repeatedly to get the medium out. I think their idea was to mix it up, but both jobs are actually quite hard on the wrists, but in slightly different places.

In November of 2022, I had issues with my shoulder caused by the small stations that I had to cram my 6'2" frame into. It caused me to miss a few days due to the posture required for me to fit into the station. Mtn Shadow worked with me to try to find a suitable chair, but the stations themselves were still just too small.

I was adapting to the job, or so I thought, when I began having wrist issues. I took it easy at first, until I was waking up with numbness in my hands. I eventually brought this up after determining that it was indeed the working conditions causing my problem. This was in February of 2023. By March, I was unable to make it through an entire day's worth of work without significant pain and discomfort in my hands and wrists.

During this process, Joanna took multiple pictures of the way I worked, but not others. This felt like I was being singled out or setup for something, but I assumed she was just being responsible. I was wrong. The same happened when a comment box was introduced at the facility shortly after I began working there. Did I mention I was one of only two male employees? Did I mention that when I used the box for its intended purpose, my message was ignored for two weeks? The box did not exist in the business before I was hired, and it was introduced VERY shortly after.

Logically, this means someone had a problem with me but did not communicate it, and wanted to use the message box to add plausible deniability. I understand that a workplace is not a court of law, but the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution was written for good reason: you cannot defend yourself against an attacker you cannot face, or accusations you're not allowed to read. Due to the secret nature of this message box and its timing, I have no reason to believe that my presence wasn't related to its installation. It's too perfect for it not to be.

It is at this point, in mid March 2023, that Joanna took me aside and suggested that I call and apply for L&I. I did so, at her suggestion. During the process of filing for L&I, I was fired by Mountain Shadow Nursery because of a job I worked but did not disclose on my resume, due to using one that was out of date. Nothing about the resume was a lie, and I was wrongly accused of lying by Mountain Shadow Nursery. So that means the advice given to me by Joanna was given in bad faith. Washington State then referred Mtn Shadow Nursery to a Corporate Liability firm to help them fuck me over.

L&I dragged their feet on things at first, and I waded through the extreme amount of paperwork. One thing that Washington L&I does that I think is quite manipulative and misleading is the focus on encouraging you to stay working. I managed to get a 10 hr/wk job a couple of months after Mountain Shadow fired me, but it was for less pay and I was left with less earning ability, because I could not work the initial 25 hour weeks. I am still unable to work full time as of September 2024. I did this because I thought staying in some sort of work might actually help my hands, and help me get assistance by showing some initiative.

I did not tell the new employer that I needed any special light duty but I did mention that I was on L&I and trying to recover from an injury. There was also no indication from L&I that I might need to travel extensively, to the tune of 100+ miles to get to a facility that is approved. And they'll only tell you this after the cutoff for getting mileage has passed.

Due to waiting list issues getting into medical facilities and physical therapy, my case was marked "chronic" and reassigned. This new person must have a goal to cut off any sort of progress I was making, because I was denied my last few physical therapy sessions, and the full extent of medical massage. Every step of the way, Washington L&I tried to shortchange me on getting better.

They suggested that I get steroid injections, which they also noted a possible error rate. Due to the already damaged trust in both the state and the medical side, the risks of the procedure, and having to travel over 200 miles round trip to have a needle stuck in my wrist, I turned down the injection. They'd already damaged my trust. What was wrong with the cheaper and more effective therapy I was receiving? Under physical therapy, I made actual progress and felt like I had a chance of recovery. The medical massages helped ease my shoulder and wrists a bit, but I was left mid-recovery. How do they expect me to get better? I'll answer that: They don't WANT me to get better, and they don't care that they injured me.

Today, I can't lift a 40 lb bag of feed or dog food without lasting pain in my wrists. I can't sweep and mop a floor without intermittent pain and tingling. You can forget wiping down surfaces or cleaning anything with manual effort, because the pain begins and starts to build the more I do it. Is this what acceptable recovery looks like to you!?

I was raised to take responsibility for hurting others if I brought harm to them. Last time I checked, it was simply The Right Thing To Do. And in my own life, I have been charged with taking responsibility for any property I destroyed, or people that I harmed. So then, why should it be any different for a business to restore the health of the people it exploits to make its money? Did your father teach you to leave your workers hanging, Bryan? Is that how he made his money and passed the business to you? I'd like to think that man had a little integrity, but who knows. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

I challenge the State of Washington and Mountain Shadow Nursery to defend their careless and cruel disregard for harming me, and explain why I should not seek damages for lost wages and emotional distress. I worked this job for only six months, and I have been incapacitated from the injury for over 12 months. In what world is this acceptable?

My hands are important to me, and Mountain Shadow Nursery injured them and doesn't want to help me get back to 100%. I am not even at 50%! They and Washington State think barely getting by on 10 hours a week of work is acceptable recovery for tendinitis. This economic impact also affects my ability to provide for my children, so in effect these parties have damaged both me and my family.

The writing's on the wall, Washington. If you so flagrantly turn away someone who has contributed to your economy for the past decade or more, including funds for L&I, do you really think you deserve defense when the time comes to defend this land? Allies and respect are earned, not entitled or owed. And you are losing both in me if you allow a business to injure a worker and not get him back in working order. Why do I deserve to be abandoned by my country? I pay taxes like any other damned citizen. I had to sign my life over to your pathetic organization to even get the right to vote. If anyone owes shit here, it's you.

How committed is Washington to her people? I dare say she's not invested at all. Put up or shut up. I am seeking workplace injury counsel to hold these fools accountable. This is not justice, nor is it acceptable to do this to any worker.

You break it, you buy it.